


Memories

by marieYOTZ



Category: Farscape
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-29
Updated: 2011-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-28 11:18:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 9,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/307326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marieYOTZ/pseuds/marieYOTZ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is an AU of an AU. It is based on the Farscape comic series "Gone and Back Again", in which baby Deke somehow zaps John into an alternate reality - one where D'Argo and Zhaan are alive, Aeryn never left the Peacekeepers, John is married to Princess Katralla, they have a daughter, and he has a ponytail! The comic series has John so driven to find Aeryn that he goes straight into Peacekeeper territory to find her - and then just when he does, he gets zapped back to his reality. I wanted to play with the idea of him hanging out a little longer. I changed some of the "facts" of the alternate reality to suit my purposes (like ignoring the fact that alt Aeryn had a baby) but the concept is largely the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks Vinegardog for the great beta!

It all began when she was in the med lab and John Crichton had walked in. The scourge of the Peacekeepers himself had simply let himself in and indicated that he’d come with the express purpose of finding her. She’d barely understood his wild ramblings – he was madder than even the legends made him out to be. He spoke quickly and frantically, about another universe… About her, and him. It was beyond comprehension. She’d simply stared at him for a long moment, as he rambled, seemingly anxious to make her understand something – and then the soldiers had stormed in, armed to the teeth and ready to take down Public Enemy Number One. Even as they set on him, he stared at her and continued trying to tell her something about realities and wormholes.

And wormholes.

“Lieutenant Sun… What should we do with him?” Asked the captain of the squadron that now had Crichton thoroughly subdued.

She looked to the captain, distracted, still grappling in the back of her mind with the things Crichton had been trying to tell her. “Put him in a cell for now... Then contact Scorpius. Wormholes are his project, he’ll want to know about this.”

The captain nodded and gestured at his men. They hauled Crichton to his feet and marched him from the room, but before they got him out of the door he looked desperately back over his shoulder, and she met his gaze one last time.

“Aeryn…” was the last thing he said before he disappeared from sight.

**

Later, Aeryn received a summons to the Aurora chamber. She’d seen Aurora interrogations before, and found them deeply disconcerting. She’d have preferred not to attend, but Scorpius existed in a strange place in the Peacekeeper hierarchy, and he was not easily disobeyed, so she did as she’d been bid.

When she entered the chamber, Crichton was already strapped in the chair. He had a limited range of motion, but when he heard the door open, he craned his neck slightly towards her. He locked eyes with her, a strange intense gaze, until, uncomfortable, she looked away.

She walked over to the others, Scorpius and a handful of officers. “Lieutenant Sun, so glad you could join us, I thought you might find this interesting.” Said Scorpius, with one of his chilly, thin-lipped smiles. “I know you are familiar with the… workings… of the Aurora chair. Once activated, Commander Crichton’s memories will be displayed on this screen. We’ll be recording them as well for more thorough examination. If the Commander does indeed know something of wormholes, as you seem to believe he was suggesting, we shall uncover it.”

Aeryn nodded brusquely, and Scorpius again smiled his frigid smile. “Crichton has indicated that he’s experienced the chair before in, mmm, his reality. So hopefully this procedure won’t be an undue shock to him. Well! Let us begin!”

Aeryn, Scorpius and the others turned to the screen as Scorpius’s assistant began operating the controls on the chair. Sudden guttural moans from Crichton indicated that it had begun. Memories began flashing across the screen, too quickly to really understand… Images of a strange world -- of Crichton’s home, Aeryn could only guess. On and on they flashed, until the screen briefly lit up with the intense blue of a wormhole and then the form of a Leviathan floating in space and then…

Scorpius held up a hand “Pause!” He commanded, and his assistant obeyed. “Play back a bit, if you would… Yes. There. Hmm.. Well, now this is interesting. Lieutenant, unless you’ve had some prior dealings with the Commander that you’ve failed to disclose, it would seem that John here might be telling the truth.”

Aeryn barely registered what he was saying. She stared up at the screen uncomprehendingly. Impossibly, it was an image of… her. Her, in her old prowler pilot uniform, helmet tucked beneath her arm, staring at John Crichton challengingly. She couldn’t begin to know what to think.

“Yes, this should be very interesting…” Scorpius looked over his shoulder at Crichton, who was sweating and shivering both, gasping raggedly for breath. “Commander, I can’t tell you how glad I am you’ve come. Pray, let’s continue…”

**

That night, Aeryn retreated to her quarters to watch the memories. They certainly seemed to support Crichton’s mad ramblings about another universe, another reality, where things were similar but… different. Where she, apparently, was different. The memories had been recorded and catalogued in at least a basic fashion and would now be scoured round the clock for information about wormholes and unrealized realities and all the other strange science that this John Crichton seemed to understand.

But Aeryn was focused on different memories than PK High Command. She looked at the vid chip in her hand, and hesitantly put it in the player in her quarters before sinking down onto the bed. She knew she shouldn’t watch them but she couldn’t help herself. She scrolled through to the scene that she was looking for – where John Crichton first came through the wormhole. She smiled slightly as she watched Tauvo’s prowler clip Crichton’s craft and careen into the asteroid. He always claimed he was a better pilot than she, this ought to shut him up for a while. She kept watching, Crichton’s encounter with the Luxan, the Delvian, and the Hynerian… Aeryn smiled again when Crichton got tongued by the infamous Ka D’Argo. A brief pause, then his eyes opened and he was on the floor of one of the Leviathan’s containment cells. He located his clothes and scrambled into them, while arguing with the Hynerian. Eventually Crichton’s attention was directed to the Peacekeeper soldier sitting ramrod straight against the back wall of the chamber. The Peacekeeper pulled off her helmet to confront Crichton…

Aeryn unconsciously started running her finger up and down the portion of her scar that ran from her cheek to her eye as she watched this other Aeryn’s “introduction” to Crichton unfold. She supposed she distantly remembered having seen all that unruly dark hair and that unlined, unscarred face in a reflection at some point in her long distant past, but truly… had she ever been that young? She laughed a little as the other Aeryn leveled Crichton and then crouched low over top of him to demand his rank and regiment… And though Aeryn knew she shouldn’t, she watched on.

*

John lay stretched out on the thin mattress of the cot in his cell, passing the time with worrying. Now that they’d gotten what they wanted from him in the Aurora chair, there wasn’t much to his days other than questioning from the ship’s scientists, and worrying. Worrying about his family – Aeryn and Deke – wherever they were right now. Had they been affected by whatever nightmare had brought him here? He had no way of knowing, he could only worry. And because he was a good guy, he spared some worry for the other John’s family… for Katralla and the little girl Katrana. He hoped they were safe and that his need to come to the Peacekeepers hadn’t endangered them – but he knew that even if they were physically safe, they were both probably still confused and scared about whatever had ripped the John they knew away and left them with this stranger looking out at them through a loved one’s eyes.

He shifted on the bed, still oddly uncomfortable in this body. He hated other John’s long hair, hated the ponytail always brushing against his shoulders. He couldn’t imagine what could have happened in this John’s life to inspire him to grow it out like this. Even on their worst days on Moya, he’d managed to keep his hair trimmed fairly short, the way Jack Crichton raised him. Maybe alt John had more daddy issues? Maybe this look had been all the rage back on alt Earth? He’d probably never know…

He heard voices outside his cell, and the door opening. More questions? He sighed and sat up, preparing to face another clueless scientist asking the same shit as all the other guys had… but it was clear that that wasn’t what was happening when his visitor walked into the room.

“Aeryn – “ he began and ended, stunned.

“Lieutenant Sun.” She corrected. She stood stock straight in the doorway and someone who didn’t know her might not have seen the hesitation and the uncertainty.

But John did know her, in a fashion. “Well come on in, Lieutenant. Make yourself at home. Pull up a chair.” He said, gesturing to the only piece of furniture in the cell other than his bed. “Sorry I can’t offer more comfortable accommodations, all the cells with receiving rooms were taken, I’m told.” The initial frenzy he’d felt to find her in this reality had waned and it was a little easier to be glib.

Aeryn’s expression didn’t change, but she walked over to the chair and drew it a little nearer to the end of his cot before sitting down. John watched her all the way and when she dropped into the chair, he looked at her searchingly, the way that he’d wanted to when he’d first met her in the med lab. It was sort of fascinating, looking at the face of Aeryn Sun without the last five cycles of his time, without Moya, without John Crichton. He could see the differences. Not just the spiky functional haircut and the scar down her eye, but something less tangible… there was something sadder about this Aeryn, a sort of resignation. It moved him. He knew she wasn’t his friend, but she was still Aeryn.

“How’d you get the scar?” He finally asked, breaking the silence.

Her hand came up to touch the scar beneath her eye. “Three on one battle with some rogue Luxans. I won.”

John had no doubts as to that, but it didn’t leave a lot else for him to say, so he waited and watched.

“Did she ever want to go back?” Aeryn finally asked. “Aeryn Sun… in your world. Did she want to go back to the Peacekeepers?”

This surprised John a little. “Did she… well, yes? I guess, at first. But she was tossed aside by them, without a second thought.”

“Tossed aside by Crais.” Aeryn corrected, a little too quickly. “He’s the one who exiled her and he had a vendetta. He was hardly the united voice of Peacekeeper command…”

John just shrugged. “Yeah, well, he was when it counted. From what I gather, the system for appealing a Commanding Officer’s decision in the PK ain’t exactly fair and evenhanded. There was nothing she could have done. And in all fairness… by Peacekeeper standards, she was irreversibly contaminated. She’d been on Moya with us, unobserved, unshielded by her PK cronies. Crais coulda’ overlooked it, but once he called her on it, no way was PK Command going to step in to defend one lousy prowler pilot…”

John paused. “But I guess that’s not really answering the question you asked. So – did she want to go back?” He was silent for a moment, trying to find the right words. “I think… I think she’d tell you that there were things about the life that she missed. We didn’t really do structure and order on Moya, I know that got to her sometimes. Probably still does. And… she sometimes says there were things from that life that she took with her – honor, loyalty, duty, self-sacrifice. But ultimately, did she want to go back? No… She was… more… on Moya then she had been before, as a Peacekeeper.”

Aeryn’s eyes were guarded as she watched John. It was a moment before she responded. “You give yourself a lot of credit, John Crichton.

John grinned a little, but shook his head. “Nah, I give Aeryn a lot of credit.” He answered, watching her with a little smile.

Aeryn shrugged and stood, pushing the chair back slightly to where it had been when she’d entered the cell. “As you please. Goodbye, Commander Crichton.”

“Goodbye, Lieutenant Sun…” He responded, as he flopped back down on the bed. He said it with at least a passable amount of respect, but she felt like there might have been the ghost of a fondly whispered ‘Aeryn’ behind the words.


	2. Chapter 2

Aeryn did not plan to return to see John Crichton in his holding cell. She couldn’t have lived as long as she had as a professional soldier without a well-honed sense for trouble.

That being said, she could not resist returning to the memories on the vid chip. Weeks after they’d put Crichton in the Aurora Chair and discovered the information about wormholes and these strange branching realities, she was still struggling to process the concept of worlds on top of worlds with endless similarities and yet endless variations. As strong as her instinct was to reject the idea that she could have ever betrayed the Peacekeepers, defected from the life that she’d been born for, she could not deny that the memories had a strange draw for her. She was not unaware of the voyeuristic quality of what she was doing but truly, who could ever resist watching scenes from a life that they might have lived?

There were parts of this other Aeryn that she recognized. The earnestness with which she asked Crichton to kill her before the living death set in was familiar – in fact she’d made that very plea to a fellow soldier at what must have been about the same point in the timeline as this Aeryn’s brush with heat delirium. Her sharpness, her derisiveness, how frelling protective she was of her prowler. She saw that Aeryn’s Peacekeeper roots in, among other things, her disdain for the tech girl (really Crichton? A tech?)

Still, the differences were apparent, evermore so as she watched further on from that defining moment when Aeryn Sun removed her helmet and encountered John Crichton and the course of her life changed. She herself had no such defining moment. It was strange to think that her life, which had been spent in skirmish after battle after war still had lacked any truly explosive incident. In watching the way the other Aeryn’s life had in a single instant veered so wildly off track, it became clear to her that her life had progressed in a perfectly linear fashion, from birth right on through the Peacekeeper ranks. She could have stood on one end of her life and seen clear on through all the way to the other, without having to so much as crane her neck.

The fallout of the events with Namtar fascinated her. That Aeryn Sun was permanently altered by the encounter. It seemed that she carried some of Pilot’s DNA within her genetic makeup. Another branch in a different direction that moved the course of their two lives yet further apart. It was the memories from this incident that truly sparked her fixation on the concept of unrealized realities and their potential import. And it was because of this incident that ultimately, despite truly well-reasoned arguments with herself about why she shouldn’t, she went back to Crichton’s cell.

**

This time, he recognized the footsteps coming down the hall. He sat up quickly, anxious to see her. He knew it wasn’t the *right* her, but she was close. And he was lonely – she was as near to a friend as he’d find while locked in this cell.

The door opened and she walked in. She grabbed the chair, pulled it closer to the cot and sat down, just the same as before.

“We’ve been watching your memories,” she began without preamble.

“Yeah, I gathered as much after the first few rounds of questions about things from my memories. Wormholes being the big one… why does no one ever want to ask me about baseball?” He cradled the back of his head in his interlocked fingers as he leaned back against the wall.

Aeryn didn’t bother responding. “I find that I’ve been watching more… selective memories –“ She paused then, not knowing how to continue.

John stared at her for an instant and then broke into a bemused grin. “You’ve been watching my memories of Aeryn,” he said, understanding dawning on him.

She looked at the wall, slightly abashed. “I was – I confess – it is… impossible to resist viewing a life you might have led.” She looked back at him and shrugged, a little helplessly.

He laughed. “Hey, don’t have to tell me that. Try living one…” He said, gesturing around a room, indicating his current surroundings in their totality. “Seems a little non-Peacekeeper regulation though. Aren’t you guys prohibited from experiencing curiosity?”

She smiled a little at that. “I’m sure that your Aeryn has changed very much in the cycles that you’ve known her, thanks in no small part to your influence, no doubt. But you must allow for the possibility that I’ve changed a little in the last five cycles, even without the redoubtable influence of John Crichton…”

He inclined his head, point conceded.

“I’m not near so put out by a little bending of protocol as I once was. I’ve had experiences that have shaped me and met people who changed me, too, you know?”

He nodded. “Velorek?” He suggested.

She jerked her head back, surprised. “You know about Velorek?” She asked, eyes suddenly looking a little haunted.

He wanted to reach out to her, a gesture of support, but he couldn’t do that with her. Instead he just leaned a little closer to where she sat. “Yeah, I know. Guess you haven’t watched that far yet…”

She was quiet for a long moment. Contemplative, sorrowful. Finally she spoke again. “Do you think there’s a reality where that betrayal never happened?”

He nodded slowly. “Sure… infinite numbers of them, from what I understand.”

She huffed a little, rueful, sad. “I wish this was one of them.” She shook her head as though the quick motion could dispel her ghosts, then stood up quickly. “I have to go. Thank you for speaking with me. Goodbye, Crichton.”

“Bye, Aeryn…”

This time, she didn’t correct him.


	3. Chapter 3

A return to Earth and the initial encounter with the Ancient species where they gave John the wormhole knowledge. Scorpius had watched the end of this encounter countless times, fascinated by this previously unknown species – their power, and their seeming fragility. Scorpius contemplated whether they lived outside of the separate realities as a single species, or within them, multiplied onto infinity like all the rest of them. Aeryn had met with him a handful of times since the Aurora chair. He knew that she’d seen Crichton in his cell, and she could tell the idea pleased him. He was a master of manipulation and she had no delusions about his willingness to use her to get to his end goal. He was brilliant, and dangerous, and she was sure he’d chase wormhole knowledge to the end of any universe he had to go to.

At times like this, where she was subjected to machinations and scheming, she missed being just an Officer and a prowler pilot. She missed the ease of having no concern about the end goal.

She felt a kinship with John in the memories – back on Earth, his home, and yet somehow lost in the one place where he had always belonged. She understood the way that he stood staring out a window at a familiar landscape grown foreign.

And then he sat down on the bed and rested his head so gently on Aeryn’s shoulder, like it was the one place left that he still knew how to be. As the other Aeryn turned her head to meet John’s lips, Aeryn stopped the feed. Some moments, she simply couldn’t intrude on.

She pushed off her bed, feeling agitated and unsettled. She could think of only one way to calm herself down.

**

He was pacing back and forth when the door to his cell opened. Aeryn stood on the other side. She didn’t come in, though, she just stood outside looking at him expectantly.

“Hey…” He finally said, curious as to what she was up to.

“Did you and your Moyans spend any time sparring?” She asked, fiddling with some wraps and gloves tucked under her arm.

“Yes…” He answered cautiously. “If by ‘did we spar’ you mean did D’Argo and Aeryn frequently enjoy an opportunity to whup my ass…then yes.”

She smiled at that, almost a grin really. It very nearly made her look lighthearted. Seemed that no matter the reality, his incompetence was a great source of amusement to Aeryn Sun. She cocked her head, indicating that he should follow. He did as she bade. As he exited the room, she’d already started down the hall and he had to trot to catch up with her. He noticed that his guard followed a little ways behind.

“Is this… allowed?” He asked “I mean – not that I don’t appreciate a chance to get out of that room that doesn’t involve parsing physics with a Peacekeeper egghead, but I wouldn’t want you to get in any trouble on my account.”

She gave him a look he recognized well, a patented Aeryn expression that said “You sweet deluded man, you really think highly of yourself, don’t you?”

“Of course it’s allowed. Scorpius...wants your cooperation on his wormhole project. If you were truly a Peacekeeper prisoner, you’d already be dead for Crichton’s crimes. You’re not. You’re Scorpius’s. And for the time being, he wants to keep you happy.” Aeryn passed him a set of wraps and he began covering his hands as they walked.

“Why, though? He’s gotta know by now that I don’t have the knowledge anymore. I can’t just make him a wormhole ‘cause he lets me out to play every now and then.”

Aeryn shrugged, wrapping her own hands efficiently and expertly. “You’re closer to that than anyone else is. I think he hopes some of the knowledge will come back, that you can get him even a half-step closer. Without the information the Ancients put in your brain, even a neural clone can’t help him now. Believe me, I’m sure he’d try.”

“I don’t doubt it.” John answered ruefully, “I’ve known the guy a long time.”

They turned into the fitness room, no one else was around. The guard stood in the doorway, watching idly. Aeryn walked to the far side of the mat, rolled her shoulders back once and then waved her wrapped hands at him challengingly.

The first elbow to his ribcage felt like coming home.


	4. Chapter 4

Watching her death unnerved her, but only because she found it so much easier to watch than her life. She saw it through John’s eyes, a strange flickering in and out of images – Aeryn looking at him tenderly then a flash and they were on an icy planet, looking at an endless line of bodies; then another flash, and he was in a cockpit soaring above the surface of the planet; a flash again and he was hearing Aeryn’s voice over the comms as he watched her ejected seat hurtling to the frozen sea below – and then she was gone.

Aeryn paused and leaned back against the wall by her bed. It was the sort of scene she’d witnessed a hundred times in her career, a soldiers final seconds. Frantic last words, and then an inevitable end. Peacekeeper soldiers were born to die, it was a simple truth. She wondered if that bred-in-the bone acceptance of death had made the other Aeryn’s final flight easier for her, or if the two cycles she’d spent on Moya had left her too far removed from that stoic acceptance – too attached to the act of living for her death to seem a nominal cost.

She resumed watching. The funeral was harder to watch than the death, but she couldn’t look away. It struck her as odd that they’d troubled to retrieve the body from the frozen sea, it couldn’t have been an easy task. Peacekeepers bore with no such sentimentality – the other Aeryn had explained the Sebacean view of death to Crichton when the two had been trapped in the flax; you’re dead, and that’s the end. The body held no special worth that would justify the effort of retrieval… yet Aeryn couldn’t help but be moved by the solemnity of the ceremony they held for their lost comrade. When John looked down, she could see he was in shackles, no longer to be trusted… but when he asked for D’Argo’s knife, it was provided to him.

The story continued. Crichton was strapped to a table while the Diagnosan investigated his brain. Then Scorpius appeared, then D’Argo, then a Scarran… D’Argo and John fled through the snow, trying to escape and then…

There she was. She watched through John’s eyes, she felt as though she could practically feel his beating heart and sense his disbelief. Or maybe it was just her own heart pounding

**

John sat up eagerly when he heard her voice on the other side of the hallway, conversing with his guard. He reached his leg out and hooked a foot around the leg of the chair, pulling it a little closer to the head of the bed where he was sitting.

The door opened, Aeryn walked in, and dropped into the waiting chair. “I can’t stay long,” she said, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands. “I just - I can’t believe she frelling came back from the dead!” John couldn’t help but laugh. She looked almost… put out by the whole thing

“Believe me. Neither could I.”

“It’s a strange reality you live in. Here, in this one, dead is just… dead.”

His eyes darkened slightly. “Yeah… well, her return didn’t come without a cost. There’s always a price to be paid.”

She nodded slightly, chin still braced in her hands. “The Delvian…”

“Zhaan,” he corrected firmly. “That was a hard loss. If there’s one good thing that’s come out of getting tossed into this reality, it was the chance to see her again… I really missed her. But God, that moment, seeing Aeryn alive again…” He leaned back against the wall, quiet, thoughtful. “That might be my favorite memory, you know? Aeryn standing there in the snow with her hair whipping around her, leveling D’Argo’s qualta blade at the Scarran. That moment, and the moment where I finally got her off Katratzi--”

Aeryn held up a hand to stop him, and he grinned at her. “Sorry, I’m giving the story away. I forget sometimes you weren’t there.”

She ran her hand through her hair, as she stood up to go. “Sometimes, Crichton, so do I.”


	5. Chapter 5

Two Crichtons. It was almost inconceivable. Twice the madness. It was sort of bizarrely fascinating, watching Crichton watch himself. These memories were becoming something of a madness for her, in point of fact. When Aeryn left with the other John, fleeing from the retrieval squad and Xhalax Sun, she found herself wishing she could follow them, track both of the stories at once. But even though her double was gone, she watched this John’s memories. Her interest had progressed beyond simply wishing to understand her other, and had become a fixation upon the unfolding of the story of this other reality.

**

“Tell me about the other John,” Aeryn said as she sat down. “The one who was on Talyn…”

“The other John? Well, he was good-looking, had a rapier wit and a razor-sharp intellect. I think that covers all the major points.” A strand of hair from John’s ponytail had come loose and he tugged at it in annoyance. “Man, I hate long hair! Why in hell would John do this to himself?”

Aeryn’s lips quirked in amusement. “It really bothers you, does it? Hold on.” She stood up and walked over to the cell door. She knocked on it once and it was opened. She whispered some instructions to the guard, and then returned and sat back down.

“Now tell me about him for real – what happened while they were gone?” John couldn’t resist a little grin. His leonine, scarred up, tough as nails Peacekeeper was ready for story time.

“Well, let’s see… they got swallowed by a budong.” Aeryn raised her eyebrows at this. “Rygel and Stark were in a transport outside of the budong and somehow managed to, uh, get Talyn vomited back up.”

Aeryn’s expression was dubious at best. “You’ve got to be fabricating this…”

“Now you sound like Pilot when I tried to tell him what happened on Lo Mo! And you saw those memories. It was more or less the truth.” He held his hand in the air. “Scout’s honor. That’s what they told me happened. Talyn got puked back up, Talyn John and Aeryn became… closer. Then there was an encounter with some sun god-spirit thing. God like alien, you know? And then… then they met Xhalax Sun and her Peacekeeper retrieval squad, come to capture Talyn.”

At this, Aeryn sat back in surprise. “Oh, they met her? I knew that’s why they had left Moya, but… so she found them”

Crichton nodded. “She did. Wish I could say that it was a happy reunion, but, uh, it really wasn’t.”

“No, I don’t expect it was. Here, Xhalax Sun was killed several cycles ago, but I am familiar with what her reputation was. She was known to be infamously unyielding in the pursuit of an objective. She was… the consummate Peacekeeper.” She paused a moment before continuing. “Was your Aeryn glad of the chance to meet her?”

John thought for a long moment, but found he couldn’t answer the question. There were too many layers to those encounters. “She doesn’t talk about it very much. I think it was… important… for her. But I think it hit her really hard.”

“I can only imagine –“ Aeryn began, but before she could continue, there was a knock on the door. Aeryn leapt up and strode over to the entrance. The guard opened the door and passed in a small box. She nodded at the guard x and he pulled the door closed again. She opened the box, examining its contents as she walked towards the chair, but she didn’t sit down.

Instead, she stood behind the chair and tapped its back expectantly, holding up something that looked very much like a wicked sharp pair of scissors, as she tossed the rest of the box onto his bed.

“Come on then, don’t you trust me?”

“Well, no, not entirely…” John answered, but he complied with the directive. He got off the cot, moved over to the chair, and took a seat. He leaned back cooperatively as he felt Aeryn tugging at the leather tie holding his hair in the ponytail. “You think I should do this? I mean… technically it’s not my body. I’m just borrowing it.”

Aeryn got the tie loose and discarded it on the floor. She ran her nails lightly through his hair, getting it to sit more naturally before she began her work. John sighed a little. He was sure it was having the hair released from its confines that felt so good, and not the too-familiar hand that was gently combing it out. Well, he was almost sure.

“He’s not here, you are.” Aeryn said. Hand still in his hair, she turned his head slightly so he could make eye contact with her. “Ready?” She asked, a challenging look in her eyes.

Taking a deep breath, John turned back to face the front. “Do it. What the hell. Not like I’ll be around for him to get pissed at.”

“Tell me the rest about Talyn John?” Aeryn asked, as she gathered the hair back.

“Well, the Ancient version of my dad reappeared. He clued them in that somehow the information that I’d given Furlow on Dam Ba Da had gotten into the wrong hands. Someone was running experiments with Charrid test pilots. John figured it had to be Furlow, on Dam Ba Da. I’d – we’d – given her the information on the module the first time we were there –“ A single snip, and the irritating tug of too-long hair was gone. Aeryn ruffled her hand across his scalp again, figuring out how to proceed. He continued his story as she worked.

“Furlow betrayed them to the Charrids and the Scarrans. She killed the Ancient. There was a Scarran Dreadnaught, and it got ahold of Furlow’s data. But by then, John had figured out how to make a device that could destroy the Dreadnaught. He flew up in the module replica with the wormhole device and he opened a wormhole into a star. The Dreadnaught was destroyed, one more crisis averted.”

Aeryn was still hard at work, he could hear her clipping away, but he could feel how intently she was listening.

“The other John, though… he’d been exposed to some radiation when the device was opened prematurely, and – there was just nothing to do, I guess. He died on Talyn.”

John never found it easy to talk about what happened with Talyn John. He’d tried, sort of, when he’d been on Earth, and he apparently hadn’t improved at it since then. It always made him think of the ghostly image of the other John, matching him round for round in rock paper scissors.

“After that, they came back to Moya, except Stark. But Stark sent his mask back. It had a message on it… something that Talyn John had recorded for me. That’s how I know most of the stuff I do from that time. Aeryn’s never really been big on talking about it…”

Aeryn tossed the scissors onto the bed and then her hands were back in his hair, ruffling and smoothing. Then she brushed some clippings off of his neck and shoulders. Maybe he imagined it, but he thought she gave one of his shoulders a sympathetic squeeze before stepping back.

“All done…” She said. He turned to look at her, and she smiled a little at her handiwork. “It’s not even that bad. I confess, cutting hair is not at the top of my skill set.”

“Now you tell me,” John retorted, smiling back. He ran a hand across his head. It felt much closer to right. “Thanks.”

She shrugged as she moved to gather up the supplies and leave. “Thank you for telling me about the other John. It sounds like he was a brave man.”

“Yeah,” John said, acknowledging his sacrifice. “I think he was.”


	6. Chapter 6

By the time Aeryn got to the storming of Katratzi, two monens had passed since Crichton’s arrival on the base, and somehow his reality had become more real than hers. The memories were making her face head-on a truth that had previously been amorphous and unacknowledged by her.

Her life was nothing but duty. She’d been born and bred a Peacekeeper soldier. Her utility in a prowler was the entire measure of her worth. In the end, all she was was a tool to be used in these never-ending political maneuverings and power struggles.

“You can be more…” were the words Crichton had spoken to his Aeryn when he dragged her along out of Peacekeeper custody and back to Moya. Be a fugitive, be a mother, be a Pilot. Reconstitute a frozen Hynerian, get crystallized, go to Earth, die for love.

Aeryn, hunched on her bed, threaded her fingers through her hair and sighed heavily. She felt as though these memories had awakened some dormant voice whispering a frightening truth.

Aeryn Sun did not want to be a Peacekeeper anymore.

**

He was glad to see her. He was always glad to see her. He tried not to think about it too much, but she was a beautiful sight in any reality… and truth be told, the more she came, the more familiar she felt to him. And it seemed to be the same for her, because when she came in this time she sat down opposite him on his cot, one leg tucked against her, one dangling off the side off the little bed.

“Hey…” He said, slightly bemused by the way she suddenly commanded the space.

She looked at him thoughtfully, lip caught between her teeth and brow furrowed, like she was trying to decide what exactly she wanted to say.

“Why did you come here, John?” She finally asked.

“You know that, already. It was something my son did, I didn’t –“

“No –“ she interrupted, shaking her head firmly. “Why did you come here. To a Peacekeeper base. It was frelling beyond idiotic…”

His eyes softened as he looked at her. “You already know that too… I came for you. I landed in this reality, came to with stupid hair, surrounded by friends I thought were dead and people I didn’t know, and the first thing I looked for was you. You weren’t there, no one knew what I was talking about and – I had to find you.” He felt a little residual desperation, just remembering what it had been like every time he had mentioned her name and everyone looked at him blankly, or even hostilely. In the end, they’d supported him, though. Maybe they could tell how much it mattered. He reached out and took one of her hands and wrapped it in his two. She didn’t pull it away, she simply looked back at him. “Every universe, every reality, you… belong… with me.” He let her hand go and leaned back against the wall. “I had to find you."


	7. Chapter 7

In the end, she was terrified of the wormholes. In the end, Einstein reappeared, and he took the knowledge from John, and she understood why he’d wanted it gone. It was too much, too dangerous, too susceptible to abuse.

Not long after she finished, Scorpius summoned her, and told her of his plans for Crichton. For a couple of days, she avoided Crichton. She spent her time wrestling with what she’d seen, and what she’d learned, and in the end, she knew what she’d have to do.

**

“I’ve been thinking…” She began, without so much as a how-do-you-do.

“Lay it on me” he responded, leaning back into the corner and grinning a little.

“In your reality, you first encountered the Ancients during your first cycle on Moya.”

“That’s right… they made me think I’d gotten home to see if Earth would work as a home for them. They realized it wouldn’t, but they gave me the wormhole knowledge that would be the bane of my existence for the next three cycles. There was only one good thing that came out of that little trip – “

Aeryn raised an eyebrow and interrupted quickly. “Yes, well, be that as it may, try and focus with me here, Crichton…”

He grinned at her and didn’t think he imagined the glint of amusement in her eyes as she continued. “You met the princess Katralla a cycle later, correct?”

“Yeah, close enough… where are you going with this?” He cocked his head, curious to hear what she was thinking.

“Just that… keeping in mind the possibility of endless variations, it still seems as though the other John’s path was similar to yours until your time on the Royal Planet-“

“Other than the absence of you…”

“True – but while your Aeryn might have been instrumental in the different paths taken with Katralla, she was not instrumental in your initial encounter with the Ancients –“

Now he was sure that she smiled, as she held up a hand to hush him before he could interrupt

“—However pleasant her contribution to the encounter might have been. My concern, John, is that the course that you took with your life led you to freedom from the wormhole knowledge, but it’s not at all clear that the same is true of this John –“

“Assuming that he ever had the knowledge at all…”

“True. We can’t be sure of that…” She agreed, trailing off, waiting for him to catch up with her. It only took a microt.

“But – if he did, he might have it still… Because you guys didn’t have the big Scarran PK throwdown. And so he might never have had the final encounter with Einstein..

“Assuming he ever encountered Einstein at all…”

“But if he did, and he still has the wormhole knowledge, and the two of us ever get back to the right timelines…”

“He’ll be in trouble. Yes. You are of no real value to the Peacekeepers because you no longer have any knowledge. They – we – have your memories, so we know what wormholes are capable of… But we have no way to get the knowledge to create or use them. I suspect they are keeping you in the hopes that somehow this timeline’s true John will return to the body you currently inhabit and he will have the knowledge that they need to overcome the Scarran threat. I’m afraid the politics here are not so very different from the world from which you came, as you might have gathered.” She shrugged apologetically, leaning forward to lean her elbow on her knee as she rested her chin in her hand.

He rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter much to me… I mean, if he gets back, I’ll be gone. But, God… You know, I get that there are infinite universes, and in some of them things probably do just go completely to shit for me, but…I fought so hard to avoid this in my universe. I can’t believe I might have walked him into it in his. Hell I already hacked off his ponytail and traumatized his wife and kid…”

“It won’t happen.” Aeryn interrupted. She sounded firm, definitive.

He stared at her blankly.

“I’m going to get you off the base. You’re going back to Moya. You cannot be here when and if you and the other John switch places again. If he has the wormhole knowledge, Scorpius will never let him go. “ She looked at him intently. “So I’m going to get you away.”

“I – don’t – I mean, hey great, I was getting tired of this room anyhow – but… how are you going to do that?” John asked, still recovering from his surprise.

“You don’t need to worry about the details.” She answered. “Just… be ready.” She was silent for a long moment. “Do you know why I wasn’t a part of the group flying to intercept the Leviathan when you so…unexpectedly arrived?”

John shook his head, curious.

“My prowler. It wasn’t sound for flight. Tiny thing, really. Took 40 microts to repair once they’d found the problem. But I couldn’t fly with my squadron that day. So they changed their formation to account for my absence… and that’s it. One tiny piece of metal, and here we are.” She stood up to go. “It was a small thing, to change so much.”


	8. Chapter 8

The plan was ultimately very easy to set in place. It was amazing to find out how liberally one could operate when one was preparing to blow their life all apart in a real take-no-prisoners fashion.

Scorpius was planning to leave for his Gammak base and was going to be taking Crichton with him. He’d ordered her transfer as well. He wanted her to continue helping him with Crichton, and more importantly, to be on hand if the other Crichton returned. “You two had such a touching love affair in the other reality, after all. Perhaps you’d be able to… bring him out of his shell, a little, if he ends up back here.” That chilling smile, once again.

When she knew what he had planned, she made her decision to get John out, and she figured out how she’d do it.

She contacted the bounty hunter that had helped John find her. She was familiar with him by reputation, and he was easy to find if you knew what you were looking for, and who to ask. She knew he’d be able to put her in touch with Moya. A bounty hunter like that never really lost track of a former client, knowing where things were was their business.

He’d agreed to take her request to Moya. Seemed that John’s friends had kept up with him, these past monens, in an effort to get news of John. In a matter of arns from her initial contact with the bounty hunter, she was on a secured line with Ka D’Argo, Zotoh Zhaan, and the Nebari girl, Chiana.

It was… surprising… to see them in the flesh, to say the least. They appeared to be transmitting from some undisclosed location off of Moya. Wise of them not to trust her. Unnecessary, but wise.

“Who are you? What do you want? Where is Crichton?” Growled D’Argo.

“I’m Aeryn Sun. Crichton is… here, on the base still. But not for long. That’s why I’m contacting you. Scorpius will be moving him soon. We need to get him off the transport ship.”

“We?” Asked Zhaan. “A bit presumptuous, aren’t you my dear?”

“Yeah…” Added Chiana. “And why in the frell should we trust you, anyhow?”

Aeryn gritted her teeth. She’d expected this, of course, but it was still irritating.

“Look, Crichton and the whole frelling universe will be in very real trouble if your Crichton comes back while his body is still in Peacekeeper control. I don’t know what else I can do to convince you.” As she spoke, Aeryn clenched and unclenched her fists, out of sight of the view screen, attempting to vent her frustration.

It was a moment before any of them spoke. Finally, Zhaan, looking more at the other two than at Aeryn, nodded her head. “John trusted her. I…sensed she was important to him. I think that, for Crichton, we have to take this chance.”

D’Argo scowled, but nodded. “For Crichton.”

“For Crichton!” Chiana agreed.

“Tell us the plan.” Demanded D’Argo.

**

The plan was simple. Frighteningly so, D’Argo had seemed to think. No doubt he’d been getting geared up for one of Crichton’s massive frell ups waiting to happen. She simply waited ‘til they were on the transport ship and headed for the gammack base. Then she’d waited ‘til they reached the designated rendezvous point with the Leviathan’s hybrid son, Lo’la, and she HAD received the signal from the Moyans, indicating they were in position.

At that point, she’d taken a last look around her room, at her few meager possessions. Nothing all that hard to leave behind, in the end. Then she’d walked out of her quarters to the room where Crichton was being held, and cold cocked his guard. Quickly, before anyone could happen by, she opened the door to the room, and dragged the guard in.

**

John stared, caught off guard, when Aeryn backed into his room dragging along a limp form. He leapt to help her. Hastily, she wiped a hand across her brow, pushing spikes of hair back from her forehead.

“We’re leaving.” She said brusquely.

The radiant Aeryn Sun, come again.

“Aeryn, how can you… what will…” He paused, unsure what he was trying to say.

“I’m leaving too.” She answered, forcibly shoving him towards the door. He complied with her indelicate request and followed her out. She yanked the door closed behind them and started down the hall at a fast clip.

“You’re…leaving? The Peacekeepers? You’ll come with us?” He asked, stunned.

“I’ll leave with you. I won’t stay,” She answered. Her raised hand and stern look broached no further comment. Quietly, they advanced down the hall, and then down a tier of the ship, ‘til they reached the ship’s hangar. There was one tech on duty.

“Lieutenant…” he greeted, confused. He was more confused when she pulled out her pulse pistol and shoved it under his chin.

“Open the hangar door…” She demanded. Shaking slightly, he complied. He was a tech, not a hero. Aeryn beckoned John over and unhesitatingly shoved the pulse pistol into his hand. “If he tries anything, shoot him.” She explained, before turning towards the line of prowlers behind her. She approached the nearest one, opened the hatch and climbed in. He heard the prowler’s engines starting up.

“John! Knock him the frell out and let’s go!” John never waited to be told twice by Aeryn Sun.

“Sorry, man…” John offered apologetically. Even as he pistol whipped the cringing man, he heard the tech’s comms activate. “Provost! You’re operating the hanger door without authorization, what the frell is going on down there!”

John didn’t wait to hear the end of the irate message. He ran at a full sprint to the prowler and crawled in the back, the hatch closing right behind him. Aeryn gunned the ship towards the looming exit, and a microt later they were free.

**

Lo’la was waiting exactly where they’d planned for him to be, which Aeryn greatly appreciated. No one was waiting for them in its hangar. As they were exiting the prowler, Aeryn felt quick bursts of fire from the gunship’s impressive arsenal. Then she felt the strange pull of starburst all around her…

What felt like an eternity later, the ship settled. There was a sudden consuming quiet, a sound Aeryn recognized as the end of a dangerous mission. A sound that marked the end of her life as she’d known it.

“Hey…” John whispered, standing close at her shoulder; a place where it felt dangerously like he belonged. “You okay?”

She nodded, reluctant to look at him just yet. She was spared the necessity by the sound of doors whooshing open, and Crichton’s comrades rushing in.

“Crichton!” Bellowed D’Argo.

“Hey, D!” John answered. The pleasure was evident in his voice.

“John… it is good to have you back, in… whatever state.” Said Zhaan, stepping forward to take his hands in hers. He stood there, looking at her and smiling. Aeryn knew how much it meant to him to see the Delvian again – perhaps more than even Zhaan did.

“Hey John! You miss me?!” Chiana asked, breaking in to wrap John in a hug. John returned it easily.

“Baby girl, I always miss you…” He stepped back, looked at his three friends, beaming uncontrollably. Finally he turned and looked at her, still smiling. She stood off to the side, close by the Prowler, uncomfortable with intruding.

“Guys – this is Aeryn Sun. The Peacekeeper I went looking for. I know you don’t have much cause to believe me, but… she’s our friend.”

The three looked at her, expressions somewhere in the range between skeptical and hostile. She simply nodded, and then looked around her.

“Crichton…” she whispered, amazed. “It’s Talyn.”

He grinned at her. “Not here. Here there was no one to name him Talyn. Here, he’s Lo’la.”

She shook her head in wonder.

Zhaan spoke up. “John, come. Let’s enjoy a meal together while we can. Lo'la will be starbursting again shortly, towards our rendezvous point with Moya.”

John looked a little stricken all of a sudden. “Moya… is that where Katralla and Katrana are?”

D’argo nodded in the affirmative. “Yeah. We decided it wasn’t wise to have them here. We didn’t know what to expect and – “

John clapped him on the back. “It was the right call. I’d rather they be safe, man.” He turned back towards Aeryn. “Come on, let’s go eat.”

**

She spent several days on Lo'la. She found she liked John’s friends. She wasn’t surprised. She felt as though she knew them already. Liking them made it a little harder to leave, but she knew it had to be done, and when they passed by a trade planet, she informed them of her intent to depart.

The others met the decision with a courtesy that masked their relief. Crichton, though, looked stricken. She was just finishing loading her prowler with the few spare items that the Moyans had supplied her with when she heard the door open behind her, and turned to see him standing there.

“You don’t have to go Aeryn…” He said, ever so beseechingly. He might as well have whispered ‘don’t leave me here.’

“I think I do… This –“ she said, gesturing around Talyn’s – no, Lo’la’s – walls, “—is not my life. And it’s not your life either…” She reminded him, gently, before turning back to her ship to finish her preparations.

“Where will you go?” He asked.

Slowly she turned back to him. “Not sure… maybe I’ll join an elite assassination squad. I hear that was a great life choice for an Aeryn in another reality.” She smiled a little, shrugging. She really didn’t know.

She stepped away from the prowler and a little closer to him. “Goodbye, Crichton. I don’t think we’ll meet again.” And she really didn’t think they would, so for an instant she simply appreciated taking in the sight of a face she’d come to love.

“You know we don’t say goodbye.” Crichton said, smiling sweetly at her, reaching out to take her hand.

“We do.” Was her only answer. He looked at her, looked into the dark blue eyes he knew better than his own, and saw resignation, and that same bottomless aloneness he’d sensed in her from the beginning.

“You’d better go, they’ll –“ Aeryn began to say, before he leaned forward and kissed her, softly. For just a short microt, she didn’t respond. Then he felt her sigh against his lips and melt closer into him. The kiss was gentle and sad. He threaded his fingers through her hair, and even when she broke the kiss off, she stayed there, her forehead leaned against his, eyes closed, quiet, peaceful. He knew then that he’d done the right thing in going to find her. He knew that she’d be okay, she’d be everything he knew she was capable of being.

Finally, she stepped back, and rubbed a hand quickly across her eyes.

“John Crichton…” She whispered, seeming to struggle for words. “I hope you find your way home.”

“Fly safe, Aeryn.” He whispered back. Then determinedly, she turned, and climbed into her prowler. He stood in the hangar and watched after her until she was all the way out of sight.


	9. Chapter 9

He was on the alternate Moya for another monen or so. It was a strange time of laughing with D’Argo, and talking with Zhaan, and trying to be some sort of a dad to Katrana, and always dodging the Peacekeepers – and even more so, dodging Katralla’s wounded stares. And always, always thinking of Aeryn. Both of them. He was more lost in those days than he had been in a cell on the Peacekeeper base, but he did his best.

And then one day, without warning, while walking through the halls and talking with D’Argo over the comms, that long absent vibrating sensation overtook him a second time. “D’Argo, man, I think…”

That was all he could get out before speaking became impossible. There were no words that could have described the sensation. It was like each of his molecules letting go. He screamed. The last thing he was aware of was D’Argo’s alarmed voice calling his name…

… no. Not D’Argo, he thought to himself, confused. That was Aeryn. Aeryn’s alarmed voice calling him name. This was Aeryn’s embrace he was cradled in. That was Aeryn’s gentle hand stroking his cheek then brushing sweat soaked hair back from his forehead.

And as he gingerly opened his eyes it was Aeryn’s slate blue gaze that he was looking into. Beautiful worried eyes in an unscarred face.

He reached up and touched her face. “Aeryn…” He whispered. “Baby, it’s good to see you.” He dropped his hand and slowly, he pushed himself up to a sitting position.

“John…” She breathed, relief evident. “What happened? You started screaming, and then just.. collapsed.”

Looking around them, he realized exactly where they were. Still in the Hynerian doctor’s office. Deke was still sitting on the exam table. Rygel hovered just a few metres off, watching on anxiously.

“How long was I out?” He asked, looking back at Aeryn.

“Thirty microts, no more. Are you okay?”

John rubbed his face hard, before pushing himself back to his feet. “I don’t know. I think so… Let’s just get back to Moya. I’ll tell you about it there.”

**

The incident was isolated, and in time John and Aeryn’s concern about what had happened to him gave way to concern about what Deke was apparently capable of. But the alternate reality haunted John. He didn’t even know if it had been real, and yet he wondered about the other Moya and the other John, and sometimes when he slept, he dreamt of an Aeryn with an angry scar, and deep, sad eyes.


	10. Epilogue

They were spending a couple of days on a planet called Urauss, to restock Moya and Lo'La, and to just get a break from the endlessness of space. It was good for Katrana to experience a day with the sky above and the earth below. Or the urauss. Whatever you called this stuff, he thought, rolling some gravel under his boot.

Katrana was with Katralla now, who was determined that her daughter experience some of the culture of the planet. John was dubious about how much culture there could be on a backwater planet like this, but Katralla had a gift for uncovering it wherever they went. Must be the royal blood.

The others were shopping for supplies, and probably getting up to trouble. That gave John about two arns probably before he had to bail them out of jail, in which time he was hoping to find a part he needed for his module.

As he walked into the parts dealer’s shop, he ruffled his hair a little. He’d gotten used to the close cropped cut, although he still wasn’t sure how he felt about someone giving him a makeover during his lost months.

Inside, John approached the dealer, and explained to him what he was looking for. He had the broken one with him to give the guy – gal – creature more of an idea what he was looking for. It scuttled towards the warehouse to see what it could find.

While he waited, the door behind him swung open. John turned to look and see who was coming in. It was a Sebacean woman, with long black hair, and dark blue eyes. She was stunning.

But apparently, so was he… because she stood there, halfway-in halfway-out of the store, a ghost of a smile playing at her lips.

Slightly confused, John cocked his head and returned the smile, brow furrowed questioningly. His lack of comprehension seemed to settle something for her. She took a deep breath, stepped the rest of the way in, and closed the door behind her.

“Hello…” she said, as she walked up to the counter.

“Hey.” He answered back. He couldn’t stop looking at her.

The parts dealer came back, with some roughly comparable replacements for John. It took John a long minute to notice the creature on the other side of the counter, trying to pass the parts to him.

“Oh… yeah. These’ll be fine.” John fished around in his pocket for the credits, and gathered up his purchases.

He walked to the exit, but he hesitated before pushing the door open. Slowly, he turned around. The Sebacean woman was watching him, secrets behind her dark eyes.

“Bye.” He said, at a loss for words.

“Bye..” She answered softly. She smiled, but John thought it seemed sad.

Finally, nothing left to say, he turned, pushed the door open and walked into the street.

Right after he left, Aeryn Sun walked away from the counter, and over to the doorway. She watched him go until he was all the way out of sight.


End file.
